3 ways Brazil’s environmental decisions affect the world

What happens in Brazil doesn’t stay in Brazil. Whether you live in South America’s largest country or half a world away, what happens there impacts your life, from the coffee you drink to the hardwood floors in your home to the air you breathe.

In some ways, the world’s seventh-richest country has made remarkable environmental progress in recent years. In the past decade, Brazil reduced its CO2 emissions by more than any other country, largely by curtailing deforestation in the Amazon basin. In June 2015, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and U.S. President Barack Obama announced a joint effort to address climate change, in which both countries pledged to increase their power generation from renewable energy to 20% by 2030 — a powerful statement ahead of the U.N. climate change summit in Paris later this year.

Yet despite these achievements, the country’s resources — and the benefits they bring to people near and far — are by no means secure, and the forces that threaten them are inextricably connected.

Brazil is at a crossroads, and the path its leaders choose will be felt beyond the country’s borders. Here are three ways Brazil’s environmental decisions will affect the world.

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Continued conversion of Brazil’s tropical forests to farmland and urban sprawl won’t just make things difficult for the Brazilians who depend on the forest; it will also limit the Amazon’s ability to function as the “lungs of the Earth” that help regulate the Earth’s climate.

But it’s not all bad news. Under the Brazil-U.S. climate plan, Brazil has committed to restoring 12 million hectares (almost 30 million acres — about half the size of Uganda) of lost forest. Conservation International (CI) is supporting a number of initiatives focused on reducing deforestation in Brazil, including the Kayapó Fund, which helps provide one of the country’s largest indigenous groups with economic alternatives to logging, enabling them to continue to be the stewards of their homeland.

Brazil is one of the greatest food producers in the world, ranking among the top three in commodities such as soybeans, coffee, meat and sugar. These ample harvests were built upon a combination of technological innovation and vast land conversion; half of the Cerrado wooded grasslands have already been turned into farms.

But current food production will not be enough; the United Nations estimates that to feed a population estimated to grow to over 9 billion people by 2050, humanity will have to increase agricultural outputs by 60%. Brazil is expected to play a significant role in this effort, but environmentalists fear that it will put further pressure on already-stressed ecosystems.

Aware of this challenge, CI is engaging with companies, governments and other organizations to develop a path for sustainable agricultural landscapes in Matopiba, a province on the frontier of agricultural expansion in the Brazilian Cerrado — and probably our last chance to do it right.

While droughts are a natural occurrence, this one may have surprising roots. Urban sprawl in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro is encroaching on the Atlantic Forest, a diverse rainforest that once stretched along much of the Brazilian coast and now exists only in fragments. The clearing of the Atlantic Forest for development removed a key driver of rainfall in that region, exacerbating conditions that favor drought and potentially affecting precipitation patterns far inland into the Amazon, including where the Amazon watershed touches neighboring Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia.

São Paulo’s dire situation is a reminder that removing large swaths of forest can have far-reaching effects for local climates as well as global ones — and that securing water supplies in urban areas is essential. Through the Water and Cities Initiative, CI is supporting the governments of Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City and Bogotá in restoring their respective watersheds to ensure that residents have access to water and will be more resilient to shortages exacerbated by climate change.

In order for Brazil to sustainably grow its economy, it must listen to nature. Under CI’s Nature Is Speaking campaign (known as A Natureza está Falando in Brazil, we’ve produced Portuguese-language versions of seven of our films, voiced by some of Brazil’s biggest names. We also plan to produce additional films about some of Brazil’s unique ecosystems in the coming months — stay tuned.

I am so pleased to read this article. It indicates danger but also indicates action is being taken in the right direction.
It is such a huge subject and of such importance I wonder why it is so difficult to spread the news to the world.

Brazil is so importantly located for the world’s environment. What you do affects the entire earth. I only wish USA would wise up, but that may be too much to ask from my country who is ruled by the almighty buck. Yes there are many environmentalists here, but the billionaires rule the roost and we are fighting an uphill battle.
Estephania I hope you are right.

Where is the world leader that has the moral courage to tell the human race that to avoid disaster, the present world consumption levels need to be immediately, drastically cut, if the world doesn’t want to deteriorate into a war zone for the limited resources which this dear old planet can possibly supply.
Nobody on this earth can squeeze 2 litres out of a one litre container, a fact that can never be denied.

ant to realize that there are issues but its fantastic to hear that there is already actioning upon it. We are with nature and environment and this fact cannot be denied. There are many organizations that work to spread this awareness and to cure the damage done. Ashirvadam is one suchNGO in Bangalore, India that provides funds and grants to NGOs contributing to nature conservation, wildlife protection etc.